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Tuesday, March 9, 2010

Tase this ________ I think it's gone bad.

Has anyone ever been asked to taste something because someone else isn't sure if it's gone bad or not? Or do you know someone who keeps food sitting around for ages, because their not sure when to throw it out. Brought to us by The Foundation for Neo-cognitive & Ontologoical Research and Development stumbleupon this useful table that basically gives you a guideline for when things go bad. I feel like I should blow it up, frame it and give it to my grandmother, who perpetually feeds us spoiled food and has absolutely no concept that food can go bad even in the freezer after a period of time. She seems to think the freezer magically transports the food back in time, and makes it edible for eternity. She's also the type of woman who moves with whatever she has in her fridge, pantry or freezer. Meaning that weather she is moving to Florida for the winter, or is back to Toronto for the spring, or moving from the condo she's been living in for 10 years she takes absolutely everything with her. I once heard her ask my mother to make a cous cous salad and freeze it so she could serve it at a dinner party a month later in Florida. Like they don't have cous cous in Florida? I'm still scratching my head over this one. My most recent horror came just a few months ago. My boyfriend and I were visiting her in Florida and she decided she wanted to make a Greek salad for lunch. I saw the feta cheese come out of the freezer, and the tomatoes come out of the fridge and I imediatly threw up in my mouth. I asked that she please leave the cheese and tomatoes off my salad, but she obviously refused and began yelling at me for being such a food snob. She loves to argue that I have no idea what I'm talking about when I tell her not to put the tomatoes in the fridge. As not to create any more issues I tell her just to make the salad the way she wants and throw everything in. Then she asks my bf and I if we like olives we both said sure! Little did we know that the best before date was 8 years earlier. Eewww. 
I sat down to eat my salad, and knew right away there was a whole bunch of things wrong in my bowl.  I ate as fast as I could, and just pushed the olives off to the side - at this point I didn't know they had gone extinct. My boyfriend noticed that I had an entire bowl of olives left, and he began pilling them onto his plate. I couldn't believe my eyes, I knew sometimes he had weird taste in food, but I was really shocked that he couldn't taste anything wrong with them. I think he was just trying to get grandma to like him or something cause those things tasted like a dead rat. Not that I know what a dead rat taste like, but i'm guessing. When I finished eating I quickly started to clean up. I wanted to check the labels on the items I had just been fed simply out of curiosity. I knew they had been over due, but I couldn't have ever guessed how long overdue they actually were. The feta was at least 6 months old and the olives were just rediculous. They were older then my youngest cousin. I showed my bf the horror I had just seen, and I'll never forget the way he looked at me after that. I don't think he'll be as eager to eat anything she feeds him again. 
Anyways getting back to the point of this post. FOOD GOES BAD! Especially the food you should be eating. One of the "Food Rules" in Dr. Michael Pollan states that you should only eat foods that  will eventually rot. And to my dear grandmother this doesn't mean you should eventually eat foods once they've gone rotten. All teasing aside, she's actually a very good cook, now if only I could teach her about properly caring for her ingredients. To all you hoarders out there, stop cutting the mold off your cheese, and your bread. Spend less on groceries, and go more often. Learn to eat what you buy, and learn when it's time to say goodbye to your pantry. 

1 comment:

  1. hahahahahaaaa! You made me laugh really hard.

    ReplyDelete

Thanks for your two cents. I love change!